Man Is Given 20 Years in Rape-Murder

An 18-year-old man was sentenced yesterday to a prison term of 20 years to life for the kidnap-rape-murder of a College Park woman last Dec. 2.

D.C. Superior Court Judge Eugene Hamilton imposed the sentence on Charles A. (Tony) Smothers after hearing that presentence reports and studies had characterized Smothers as being beyong rehabilitation. Smothers could have been sentenced under the youth corrections act instead of as an adult if he had been considered a "salvagable youthful offender."

Smothers was convicted of the murder of Maxine Hatfield, 43, who was abducted by him from the Iverson Mall Shopping Center in Marlow Heights.

Mrs. Hatfield, a supervisor in the C&P Telephone Co., had just picked up her new car and was planning to show it off to friends when she stopped by the shopping center, according to evidence at trial.

There, she was abducted by Smothers, driven into the District of Columbia and raped and murdered near St. Elizabeths Hospital, the jury found. Her body was found on Bruce Place SE the next day, and her car was recovered in the District of Columbia the day after that, according to evidence.

At the time of the murder, Smothers was an escapee from the Oak Hill juvenile detention facility, according to Assitant U.S. Attorney Theodore A. Shmanda. According to papers filed by Shmanda, Smothers had a lengthy juvenile record and three other escape from detention facilities in the District of Columbia and Maryland.

Smothers' associates testified during the trial that he had planned a robbery at Iverson Mall before he went there, saying it was a good place "to make some money" because there always would be "plenty of women" waking around on the parking lot there.

A probation officer who conducted a presentence report of Smothers said "it is most difficult for this writer to define any redeeming qualities in the defenant," Shmanda said.